I was trying to remember a dream and
write it down. Instead of getting up and writing
the dream immediately after I had dreamed it, I had lain in bed
and tried to memorize all the details so I could write the dream
later. I knew this was a poor method of remembering dreams,
because when I would go back to sleep I would usually forget much
if not all of the dream.

In the particular dream which I
was trying to remember, I recalled I had been on the Hill in New Boston. I remembered I had been with
another fellow
at the bottom of the Hill and I had talked to him about "the lawyer
in me" and "the judge in me," as if I were made up
of many different people which I could call up at will. The other
fellow and I had then started walking up the back side of the
Hill.

As I continued trying to
remember the dream, I began thinking about the way I wrote
dreams, and of my desire to make the dreams intelligible to
people who read them. I had been giving this subject considerable
thought as of late, trying to come up with a formula which wouldn't break the continuity of the dream, and which would make the
dream more understandable. And here I had an example of what I
was talking about: the Hill in New Boston.

Certain places in my dreams
recurred over and over; I had taken to emphasizing those places
by capitalizing them when I wrote the dreams, for example, the
"Hill in New Boston." But I also knew if someone
were reading my dreams, the "Hill in New Boston," wouldn't mean anything in particular to the reader unless it were more
clearly described. I could describe the Hill in the dream; I
could say it was a high ridge of hills consisting of around
200 acres which my father owned in New Boston. I could describe how my
father had owned the property for many years and had even once
built a house on top of the Hill, and how I had lived there for a
while. I could describe how the Hill sat above the Ohio River
and what a panoramic view of the river lay below it.

However, how could I describe
the Hill and yet make it clear that all these thoughts about the
Hill and its history and meaning to me weren't actually in my
consciousness while I was dreaming? It seemed it was
necessary to give some history of the Hill – when I wrote the
dream – to make the dream intelligible; and yet it also seemed
necessary to make clear I wasn't consciously thinking these
thoughts about the Hill as I was dreaming.

The only solution I could think
of would be to set the descriptive narrative off in parentheses:
I must work on setting off descriptive non-dream material in
parentheses in such a way that the dream would be more clearly
understood, while the continuity and flow of the written dream
wouldn't be disturbed.

As I continued to think about
the Hill, still wondering why I had dreamed about it, I dwelled
upon thoughts of the beauty of the Hill, of the wonderful view of
the valley below. Had my dream been trying to tell
me something about that place? Perhaps I should build a house on
the Hill. Perhaps after all my rambling I would end up going back
to the very place I had left and discovering the beauty which I
had left behind there.

Thinking more and more about
the Hill, I found I was actually there. It was beautiful and
green all around me. I was standing on one of the dirt roads
which criss-crossed the top of the Hill, and I saw a field of
green corn – higher than my head – growing beside the road.
At the same time, I was still thinking of writing dreams, and
thinking of the people who read my dreams. In fact, another
fellow was now with me, and I recognized him as someone who read
my dreams: Jacobs, who I usually thought of as JJ, but whose name
I also thought was Jim Henson.

He was a tall, lanky,
black-haired fellow (probably in his early 20s). He was more
or less observing what I was doing, and I decided I wanted to
send him a clear message. I knew that he had been reading my dreams
for quite a while, and that I had read many of his dreams. I had
long thought it might be possible for us to communicate to each
other through the dreams themselves. It had taken a long time for
me to reach this point, where I felt I was able to send a message
to him in a dream, but now I was sure I could.

I asked him to get me a piece
of string. He fumbled around until he came up with a ball of
white string. He cut off a piece for me, but it was too short,
and I directed him to hold the ball of string while I cut off a
longer piece. With the string in hand, I then turned to the lush
cornfield in front of me. I took hold of one of the long leaves
hanging down from one stalk of corn. The leaf however didn't look like the leaf of a corn plant: it was long – perhaps a
meter – and round.

I took hold of a similar
leaf from another stalk of corn. I took both leaves and pulled
them up in a loop so their tops were pointed upward right
about the height of my head. I then took the string and tied the
two tops together. When I let go, the leaves stayed together,
held up in the air.

I felt quite emotional by this
union, and I hoped JJ would see the significance of it. I thought
it was a sign that we were united in a mutual effort to work with
dreams.

There was still something
else. I knew I would be writing down what I had just done, and
there was a piece of it that I didn't feel I had described
correctly: the leaves of the corn stalk. They hadn't looked like
leaves at all. They had looked exactly like something else, but I
couldn't figure out what it was. Suddenly it came to me:
asparagus! The leaves had actually looked like long slender
asparagus stalks, and when I had tied the tops together, it was
as if I had been tying together two pieces of asparagus. How
peculiar and yet how appropriate that seemed.

Still something else was
occupying my thoughts: JJ's name. It seemed when I thought
of him, I thought of him under another name: "Dolphin."
I was unsure Dolphin was the name he used himself, or whether it
was one which I had given him; but I was sure Dolphin was the
appropriate name for him. Someone else on the Internet dream
group where we wrote our dreams used the name "Two
Dolphins," but I wasn't familiar with that person. I hoped
if I referred to JJ as "Dolphin," he wouldn't
think I was confusing him with "Two Dolphins."

I was hopeful that JJ and I
would be able to deepen our dream connection. I was also hopeful
we would be able to find someone else to join us. I already had
someone in mind. I had read several of her dreams on the Internet
dream group, and I thought her style was similar to mine and JJ's. I clearly (but inaccurately) remembered her name: Debbie
(her actual name was Donna).